This is an article from
Theology Wales:
the Church and Homosexuality
Full contents:
Guest Editor's Introduction
- Rev Jenny Wigley
Presidential Address
- Archbishop Barry Morgan
Same-sex relationships
- Bishop Richard Harries
The freeing of Anglican identities - Rev Dr Lorraine Cavanagh
Facing up to our differences
- Rev Jean Mayland
Same-sex unions
- Rev Dr Will Strange
Homosexuality - the biblical evidence
- Rev Prof DP Davies
Engaging with the scriptures
- Canon Robert Paterson
A view from the pews
- Tim Heywood
Facing up to our differences
Rev Jean Mayland
Jean Mayland worked as Ecumenical Officer for the North East and the Anglican Diocese of Durham. She was appointed as Associate Secretary for the Community of Women and Men at Churches Together in Britain and Ireland in May 1995, then as Co-ordinating Secretary for Church Life at CTBI in December 1999. She retired from that post last year. She is married with 2 daughters and 3 granddaughters.
The Background
November 2002 - an Ecumenical Conference takes place on the attitudes of the member churches of CTBI towards the rightness or wrongness of Christians - particularly ordained Christian Ministers - living in samesex relationships which include full sexual activities. As the positions of the churches are presented it becomes clear that almost all churches are deeply divided on these issues. Most have fairly traditional statements which half their members do not accept. A few have more liberal statements but agree that many of their members are unhappy about them. Papers are given about theological positions and different exegeses of the Biblical texts are presented. A practising gay priest speaks movingly about his life and his faith.A woman priest expresses the views of young people. The conference ends in deep division with the way forward not at all clear. After the event the gay and the woman priests send emails describing themselves as deeply hurt and traumatized by the whole event. Two 'traditional' participants write to say that they have been deeply offended and hurt by the attitude of others to traditional church teaching. One says that it is no use trying to go any further as the divisions are too deep and the positions irreconcilable.
The Setting - some insights
A priest goes into her Parish Church and finds a woman sitting weeping. After a suitable interval, she approaches her to see if she can help. After some hesitation the woman shares with her the discovery that her son, whom she loves very much, is gay. He came for a visit the day before and for the first time 'came out' to his parents and also told them that he intended to move in with his partner. She is devastated.What will people say? How can she cope with the knowledge that her lovely son is like this and how do she and her husband deal with the knowledge that they will never have grandchildren?
A 31 year old woman who only goes to church at Festivals discusses the issue with her Mother who is a priest. 'What's the problem Mum?' she says.To her and her friends same-sex and heterosexual relations are both acceptable. Commitment, loyalty and faithfulness are what matter.
Religious bodies may continue refusing to employ homosexual and lesbian people under certain circumstances, the High Court ruled in a case brought by a group of Trades Unions. But the judge made it clear that exemption from the Government's equality legislation was intended to be "very narrow. He said 'it has to be construed very strictly since it is a derogation from the principle of equal treatment.'
A gay priest writes
'Lesbian and gay people are in a minority in a heterosexual world.We have been subject to prejudice and abuse in different cultures and different periods of world history, especially from the Christian and Islamic faith traditions.The Christian Church is still failing to understand the direct relationship between traditional Christian teaching about lesbian and gay people and the oppression gay people have suffered and continue to suffer' (1).
Nineteen primates of the Anglican Church announce they are ready to break with the Episcopal Church of the USA over the consecration of Gene Robinson.
Other Bishops are quoted as follows:
As I listened to perspectives from around the globe, I realised that there were certain things that I had heard before, but perhaps never really assimilated, if I am truly honest. Primate after Primate from Africa and Asia said how sex, let alone same-sex relationships, were taboo subjects in his culture; how the row over such matters in the Communion weakened relationships with Muslim neighbours, especially where Christians were in a minority; and how newly converted Christians, believing that they had been taught what the Bible said about sexual relationships, were now so confused by the happenings in Canada and the United States that they were leaving the Anglican Church in droves' (2).
'I have sympathy with fellow Primates feeling hurt, but the hurt is not all on one side.There are outstanding gay and lesbian people doing fantastic work, people of integrity seeking to be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ.They, too, feel victimised. (3)'
Reflection
The Conference on issues of sexuality which I organized while still Coordinating Secretary for Church Life was one of the most difficult and painful I have ever attended.The people present reported that their Churches were deeply divided and within the Conference they showed that they reflected those deep divisions. The atmosphere was charged and often hostile and the differing view points were expressed with passion and pain.The gay priest who told his story was so devastated by the homophobia he experienced that he was unable to lead the evening worship as he had promised.At the end of the Conference it was difficult to see any resolution of the conflict and the only way ahead that was suggested was a further consultation on the use of the Bible. I drove home wondering why the whole matter had raised such passion and fervour. One could understand the passion of the gay priest as it was a discussion about his whole being but why did those opposed to him express their views with almost fanatical zeal? On Monday I received the emails voicing the views given in the paragraph with which I began this paper. Obviously the pain was on both sides. One traditional person just felt we could do no more.
Our churches, our congregations are deeply divided.The issues seem to be even more painful and emotionally divisive than those to do with women priests. I can only suggest that this is because sex is such a powerful and powerfully charged issue. Issues of different views on the Bible and on Ecclesiology underlie many of our divisions but on this issue they rise to the surface with a tremendous power and a passion and many people for whom the Bible has an enormous authority see them as absolutely key tests for orthodoxy and the preservation of Biblical authority.
Yet we cannot leave it like this. We have to face up to our differences and diversity.We have to dialogue with each other in a more constructive way.We have to reach agreement where we can and where we cannot we need to find more loving and creative ways of living with our differences.
As members of our churches we cannot live in nice sound-proofed boxes cut off from the world around us. We have to listen to the voices of the society in which we live and take them fully into account in our deliberations. Our mission is to the real world in which we live and not to some fantasy world in which we might wish we existed.
In many of our congregations there will be women like the one described above secretly weeping because they have discovered that their son or daughter is gay or lesbian and feel that the Church will never understand. On the other hand there are many young people from Christian backgrounds who cannot understand the attitude of the Church.'What's the problem Mum?' they say. Many people in Society are shocked by the attitude of the Church and like the group of Trades Unionists who took the matter to court are horrified that the churches are seeking exemptions from European law and claim the right not to provide equal opportunities.
Lesbian and Gay Christians do feel that the Church has oppressed them and persecuted them. On the other hand in parts of the Anglican Communion to depart from the traditional teaching of the church brings pain and confusion as the Archbishop of Wales realised as he listened to Primates from other parts of the Communion. Yet it was one of their own number from Africa who pointed out that gay and lesbian Christians feel victimised.
This is the world in which we must witness and carry out our mission and the way in which we conduct the exploration of our differences is part of that mission.As Archbishop Rowan Williams pointed out in his interview on the Today Programme with John Humphreys on Friday October 17 2003, the discussion in the Anglican Communion is about two groups that both feel excluded namely the homosexual community and small struggling churches in the developing world.
We have to tread gently as we are treading on other people's dreams.
- Look again at the vignettes with which this paper began and Jean's reflection on them.
- Which - if any - of the comments/stories makes you feel angry? Or shocked? Or sad?
What are the Major Areas of Discussion?
There seem to me to be four major areas, which need to be explored
- The place of the Bible and the interpretation of its text
- The views and opinions of gay and lesbian people
- The situation in the Anglican Communion
- The nature of unity and the holding together of diversity
The Authority of the Bible and the significance of relevant texts
Just as the 16th century controversy about indulgences revealed a deeper disagreement about scripture, the papacy, and, ultimately, the ground of our justification in Christ, so this disagreement is the tip of the iceberg. Again, the authority of scripture is at issue. Again, the limits of diversity within the worldwide Church are challenged. And, again, those issues lead us back to how we understand the gospel itself and its relevance to our contemporary world.
Can God's word to us in Holy Scripture be relied on or not? Is what the Bible says the controlling factor for our faith and conduct-or just a collection of disputed texts from which we can select what we currently like and discard the rest?
Listen to these two contrasting views:
So the Primates have firmly repudiated two key planks in the campaign to force acceptance of active homosexual people into the Church's leadership. The first is that the received tradition rests on a few "disputed texts", which ignores the fact that all the scripture texts about homosexual practice are negative, and that scripture is abundantly clear that the only acceptable context for sexual intercourse is within heterosexual marriage (4)."
The Church owns the Bible, the Bible configures with the Church's experience, and the intersecting interpretive communities of the Church work sometimes together, sometimes in opposition and sometimes in uneasy alliance, to make sense of this reciprocal relationship. We cannot, therefore, expect a consensual outcome; what we must concede is the right of each community interpretation to coexist with others and to make its own way in a sort of free market of opinion. Even the CTBI - even Rome - has to accept this reality.
Social and cultural issues: This is perhaps the realm where the most striking misfits between the biblical world and our own are to be seen.There are good grounds for the claim that the Bible has more in common with contemporary Afghanistan than with Britain or North America.We ought to reflect on that uncomfortable probability: the Bible's assumptions about women, gay men, ethnic minorities, blasphemy, slavery, war and capital punishment are decidedly pre modern, and must be offensive to every liberal, democratic, inclusive minded Christian (5).
In some ways the two quotations above reflect the most widely differing views about the place of the Bible in this discussion.There is also a range of positions between them.
- Only a small number of texts in Leviticus and the Pauline Epistles refer to homosexual practice and all of these condemn it.To some people these texts are authoritative because they are in the Bible and so homosexual practice is always sinful.
- For others these texts are important because they are set against a wider background of Biblical teaching that sexual intercourse has its sole place within a permanent and exclusive relationship between two people of opposite text.This is the view taken by Dr Gidding.
- For some people the authority of the Bible lies in their view that it is the word of God and has prime position in the Church. For others the authority of the Bible lies in the way it points to a person - Jesus.They would claim that the central fact of Christianity is not a book but a person - Jesus Christ, himself described as the Word of God.They ask what the Gospels show us about the attitude of Jesus to marginalized groups.
- Some people try to get around the Leviticus and Pauline texts by claiming that we need to read them as condemning lustful acts by heterosexual men and not referring to those who are homosexual by nature. Others regard this as convoluted and would rather accept the texts as they stand but say that they have no relevance to the current situation and our understanding of homosexual people.
- Some believe the Biblical text stands as authoritative for ever. Others believe that the text has to be re interpreted age by age by the community of the Church.
- Some believe that there can be only one interpretation of Scripture. Others such as Dr Hunter believe that there can be many and that these interpretations within and between Christian Communities are influenced by history and culture.
- Some believe that the Bible can be regarded as a text book of ethics for every age. Others maintain that it is impossible to read off a set of rules from the Bible. Resolving ethical dilemmas involves an ongoing dialogue with the text in the light of new discoveries.
- Some conduct this dialogue by beginning with the text. Others begin from experience and use the text to interpret that experience.
Somehow in the Church we need to examine these different approaches and resolve where we ourselves stand.To find out where the Church stands is much more difficult. Can we really have one view or must the Church learn (as Dr Hunter suggests) that there can be no single interpretation and we have to live with difference?
- How would you answer Jean's question?
The Views of Gay and Lesbian Christians
My partner and I started going to church.It was Church of England with an evangelical feel to it - it was very lively and always full. At first we went on Sundays, then we made ourselves known to the vicar and curate...As we attended church and became friendlier with the people in it, the curate became aware that we were a couple and that the Vicar of the Church would not allow us to receive communion.The curate produced a book which was basically " how to become straight." He said he wanted to meet us for weekly discussions about our sexuality.Our reaction was surprise and hurt.. Since then we have not attended the church.The memory still hurts very much and we both feel angry towards the church. Christians are supposed to be loving and non -judgemental.We still believe in God and Jesus but not in the way that the church teaches (6).
When I became a Christian, I began to believe it was wrong to be involved sexually in homosexual relationships and struggled how to tell my gay friends.We had always been close and supported each other. In fact had it not been for my Christian beliefs I would have been happy to continue my homosexual relationships.When I first became a Christian, it was not difficult for me to be celibate.A few years later I did struggle with homosexual feelings and temptations, but this time my faith was meaningful enough to prevent me from abandoning Christianity and becoming involved in homosexual relationships again (7).
These two stories come from the report of the Church of England Bishops on ' Some Issues in Human Sexuality.'
Once more they reflect two different views within the gay community. One person believes that to be a Christian gay person means one has to be celibate.The other believes that Christian gay and lesbian couples should be able to express their love in a lifelong partnership, which involves sexual activity.
We need to ask ourselves whether the Church has any right to ask gay and lesbian people to be celibate. Some would say yes as the Bible specifically condemns homosexual practice. Others would say 'No' arguing that if God has made some people gay or lesbian and planted within them an attraction, physical and spiritual for others of the same sex but is then requiring them to remain celibate, in effect he is playing a cruel game with them. Such a God would be a tyrant and not worthy of our love and obedience.
- If the qualities we celebrate in marriage - for example, faithfulness, mutual love and support- are to be found in other relationships, should the Church find ways to celebrate and encourage them?
- Or should the relationship always be rejected if it is sexually expressed?
- What is to be gained and risked by encouraging gay and lesbian individuals either to remain celibate, or to find a partner of the opposite sex?
The Anglican Communion
The Anglican Communion is very divided on these issues. Nineteen Primates from the developing countries have declared that they are prepared to break with the Episcopal Church in the USA.The Presiding Bishop believes that it was right and proper to consecrate Gene Robinson as a Bishop and many Anglicans throughout the Communion reacted to this decision with joy.They similarly support the Blessing of gay and lesbian unions in Canada. To many traditionalists such unions are destructive of the whole institution of marriage.The Eames Commission is trying to find ways of holding the Communion together in this difficult situation.
The mission of the Church genuinely seems to require different approaches in different situations. For some the mission of the Church demands that the traditional teaching of the Church is upheld. For others the mission of the Church is doomed to failure unless we respond to a new understanding of lesbian and gay people and new attitudes in society.
We cannot make one united decision on these matters. We have to find ways of holding our diversity together in some kind of union without resorting to whole squadrons of flying Bishops. We also have to deal with these issues in our own nations where traditionalists threaten to break away if practising gay clergy are ordained or consecrated.
Unity and Diversity
The World Council of Churches found out years ago just how difficult it is to hold together the issues of the unity and renewal of the Church with the issues of the unity and renewal of the human community.The Faith and Order Commission could make progress in seeking unity in matters of faith and doctrine but then the demand of other parts of the WCC for justice and equality for marginalized groups such as women and gay and lesbian people brought new problems and new divisions. The unity of the Anglican Communion is similarly threatened by division between those who believe it is vital to stand by traditional Biblical and ethical teaching and those who believe that the attitude of the Church to gay and lesbian people is sinful and oppressive and must be challenged. We have to discover a kind of unity, which can find room for legitimate diversity on deeply felt issues. None of us should threaten to take our bat and ball and our bank balance and play elsewhere. We have to learn to play together and we have to begin now.
1. Colin Coward All God's Children. Lesbian and Gay People in the Anglican Church - Changing Attitude pamphlet
2. Dr Barry Morgan,Archbishop of Wales - Church Times 24 October 2003
3. Most Revd Njongonkulu Ndungane Primate of Southern Africa- Church Times 24 October 2003
4. Dr Philip Gidding Convenor of Anglican Mainstream Church Times 24 October
5. Dr Alistair Hunter - Essay in Growing into God pub CTBI 2003
6. Story in Some Issues in Human Sexuality House of Bishops Group of the Church of England pub 2003